Catherine's Favorite Declarations

1. All things Catherine's! Example: Mamo sent a Christmas card that has a picture of a star over a manger, and I told Catherine that it was Jesus' star, and she said "No! No Jesus' star! Catherine's star."
2. I running! (Variations include "I running with hat on!"; "I running with Mama!"; "I running too fast!" etc.)
3. Catherine do it by herself! This applies to going up and down the stairs, putting her coat on and off, getting in and out of the car, washing her hands, brushing her teeth, putting her shoes on, cutting her food, hanging things on the Christmas tree, writing her name, pretty much everything that she can or cannot do by herself.

Monday Catherine spent the whole day at our friend's, the Norths. She helped Mr. North put up the nativity scene and she came home with a lovely gingerbread Christmas tree made with help from Mrs. North.


Sneaking a bite while I try to get her to say "Christmas tree" (it sounds like "Nistmas tree").



Monday evening in addition to our normal crowd for Bible study, friends Erinn and Kevin with Morgan and Tristan came over for dinner and dessert to celebrate Kevin's birthday. We had a wonderful evening dotted like usual with little spats between Morgan and Catherine, as they are both still learning to share. However they did work together very well to build me a new floor in the basement made out of foam letter blocks - far superior to the old floor of carpet. And it was of course another night of Catherine being up far past her bed time - she's going to start to think she doesn't even have a bed time any more.

Yesterday another friend, Mrs. Bliss, came over and spent the morning with Catherine. It was raining, so Catherine was a little disappointed that Mrs. Bliss didn't bring her dog Tugboat with her this time, but she comes over pretty much every week so maybe next time.

This was Catherine's contribution to cleaning the kitchen this morning.


I have to warn you all in St. Louis that I may be looking a bit like a zombie by the time we get there for a visit. For the last couple weeks Mary has been staying up until 11 or 12, then either Catherine or Mary are up alternately around 2, 4 and 6, at which point we're up for the day. Several weeks of 2- to 3-hour stretches of sleep are starting to wear on me (I dropped and/or broke so many things the other day that Michael asked me if I was pregnant again - apparently pregnancy and sleep deprivation result in the same symptoms).